Department of English

Faculty of Arts, Chulalongkorn University


 

A Martian Sends a Postcard Home

(1979)

 

Craig Raine

(December 3, 1944– )

 

Notes


13  Model T:

 

Model T
  • The Model T, Henry Ford Museum
    The first production Model T Ford was assembled at the Piquette Avenue Plant in Detroit on October 1, 1908. Over the next 19 years, Ford would build 15,000,000 automobiles with the Model "T" engine, the longest run of any single model apart from the Volkswagen Beetle. From 1908–1927, the Model T would endure with little change in its design. Henry Ford had succeeded in his quest to build a car for the masses.
  • Daniel Gross, "Henry Ford and the Model T" (1996)T
    On May 26, 1927, Henry Ford watched the fifteen millionth Model T Ford roll off the assembly line at his factory in Highland Park, Michigan. Since his "universal car" was the industrial success story of its age, the ceremony should have been a happy occasion. Yet Ford was probably wistful that day, too, knowing as he did that the long production life of the Model T was about to come to an end. He climbed into the car, a shiny black coupe, with his son, Edsel, the president of the Ford Motor Company. Together, they drove to the Dearborn Engineering Laboratory, fourteen miles away, and parked the T next to two other historic vehicles: the first automobile that Henry Ford built in 1896, and the 1908 prototype for the Model T. Henry himself took each vehicle for a short spin: the nation's richest man driving the humble car that had made him the embodiment of the American dream.
    Henry Ford invented neither the automobile nor the assembly line, but recast each to dominate a new era. Indeed, no other individual in this century so completely transformed the nation's way of life. By improving the assembly line so that the Model T could be produced ever more inexpensively, Ford placed the power of the internal combustion engine within reach of the average citizen. He transformed the automobile itself from a luxury to a necessity.
  • Model T Ford Club of America

 


 

 


 

 

Comprehension Check

Lines 1–6

  • What are Caxtons?
  • What does eyes melting mean?
  • What is to shriek without pain?
Lines 13–16
  • What is a Model T?
Lines 17–18
  • What are the two time pieces mentioned?
Lines 19–24
  • What is "a haunted apparatus"?
Lines 25–26
  • What is to suffer?
Lines 26–30
  • What is "a punishment room"?
Lines 31–34
  • What is "to read about themselves— / in colour, with their eyelids shut"?
            

 

Study Questions

  • What is the connection between books, the English language and literature, and Caxton?

  • What new associations for a car emerge when the Model T is described as "a room with a lock inside..."?

            

 


 

Review Sheet


 

 

 

 

 

 


Sample Student Responses to Raine's poem "A Martian Sends a Postcard Home"


Response 1:


 

 

 

 

 

Student Name

2202234 Introduction to the Study of English Literature

Acharn Puckpan Tipayamontri

June 3, 2009

Reading Response #1

 

Title

 

Text. 

Text.

 

 

 

 

 

            

 




Response 2:



Student Name

2202234 Introduction to the Study of English Literature

Acharn Puckpan Tipayamontri

September 6, 2011

Reading Response #1

 

Title


<Text of reading response>

 


        



 

 


 

Reference

 

 

Links

Defamiliarization

Riddle Poems

Martian Poetry

Critical Essays

 

Craig Raine

 

 

Reference


 

Further Reading




 


Home  |  Literary Terms  |  English Help  


Last updated May 5, 2015